[1. Initial complaint of rape made before the
King's Bench]

London. The sheriffs had been ordered to
attach Raymond de Lymoges,
so as to have him before the king on this day, that is on 13 April
[1320], to answer a charge of rape
and breach of the king's peace brought by Joan daughter of
Eustace le Seler of London. The sheriffs
had responded with the names of
pledges for prosecution:
Eustace le Seler and John le Boys; and also
[confirmation] that they would
attach Raymond so as to have him on hand before the king on that date.
And now Joan comes, and likewise Raymond. Joan accuses Raymond of rape
and breach of the present king's peace. She states that at curfew on
the night of 9 March 1320 in Walbrook ward in the parish of
St. Mary Woolchurch in London, just outside Eustace's house, by force
and against her will, Raymond took Joan by her left hand and led her
off to his room in St. Martin Vintry parish. There he threw her to
the ground and had sex with her against her will, feloniously as a
king's felon, and completely deprived her of her virginity contrary
to the peace of the king, his crown and his dignity etc. Having
committed this felony, he fled and Joan pursued him,
raising
hue-and-cry from ward to ward, as far as the nearest 4 wards,
and beyond into the king's court, so that Raymond might be arrested
on Joan's charge. If Raymond chooses to deny this felony, Joan is
ready to prove it against him in whatever way
[the court decides].

Raymond comes and says that he is a cleric
and that he cannot answer to this without his
Ordinaries. To determine in what manner
he should be turned over to the Ordinary, an enquiry is to be held into
the truth [of Raymond's claim] by a
jury. A jury is therefore to come before the king on 2 June etc.

Afterwards, on that date, Raymond comes, led by the marshal. And Joan
likewise, and also the jury. Notwithstanding that he had previously
said that he was a cleric, Raymond now declares that he is in no way
guilty of it [i.e. the rape] and
submits himself, win or lose, to this jury. When the jurors return
with their verdict, Joan is formally summoned but fails to come
to prosecute her charge. Therefore her pledges for prosecution are
to be amerced, and she
herself to be arrested. However, she is pardoned because underage.
Raymond is acquitted of the charge brought by Joan. As for
the Crown's case, being asked how he
wishes clear himself of the felony, he denies any felony or rape or
anything against the king's peace; and he submits his complete
innocence of the charges to a jury, win or lose. Therefore a jury is
to come before the king on 25 June.

On which day, Raymond comes, led by the marshal. And likewise the jurors,
who say under oath that Raymond is not guilty of the rape and felony.
Therefore he is acquitted. Furthermore, questioned as to what damages
Raymond has incurred because of this matter, they say that his damages
are to the value of forty pounds. Asked whether Joan has the means
to pay those damages, they say no. Asked also who had aided and abetted
in bringing the accusation and in drawing up the charge, they say
that Eustace le Seler of London, John le Botoner le Clop', John Lungchaump,
Thomas Shereman of Walbrook, and John de Goiz locksmith had abetted
the charge. The sheriffs are therefore ordered to
distrain them by all
their lands etc., and that the what issues from that etc., and that
their persons should be brought before the king on 6 October, to
answer both to the king and to Raymond.

[2. Review of the case by the eyre]

Joan, daughter of Eustace le Seler came before the coroners of London
on 7 February 1321 and accused Raymond de Lymoges of rape and
breach of the king's peace, in these words: Joan the daughter of
Eustace le Seler accuses Raymond de Lymoges of raping her body,
feloniously and against the peace, on 9 March 1320 in Walbrook in
the parish of St. Mary Woolchurch in London, two feet from Eustace's
house. Raymond came there after the hour of curfew, feloniously as
a felon; he seized the body of Joan, 11 years old, and carried her
off, taking her into his own house  that is, to the house rented
by Ellis Pers in the parish of St. Martin Vintry in London, into his
room, which was a solar in the upper storey. There he kept Joan
throughout the night and deflowered her, feloniously as a felon,
against her will and in breach of the peace; so cruelly and horrendously
did he handle her physically that her life was despaired of, and
still is, and there remains little hope of her recovery. Therefore
Joan begs the help of the king, so that she may have legal retribution
and justice for this felony committed in defiance of the king and
his crown and against the peace.

She found guarantors that she will prosecute her case, viz.
Henry le Sadelere porter and William atte Wode saddlemaker. Consequently
the sheriffs were ordered by the coroners to
attach Raymond to appear
before the justices here [i.e. at the
eyre]. And Joan comes, and likewise Raymond, attached by
the sheriffs. And Joan accuses Raymond of raping her of her virginity
in the location mentioned on 19 March 1320, in contempt of the
king's peace, his crown and his dignity. And this she offers to
prove in whatever way etc.

Raymond entirely denies the rape and felony, etc. He says that Joan,
in the accusation she made before the coroners, asserted that she had
been raped on the night of 9 March. But now, in the accusation she
lays before the justices, she asserts that she was raped on the 19th,
and does not prosecute the accusation that she previously made before
the coroners, which was in effect the original. He requests that
inconsistency be taken into account, not least because she could
not twice be deprived of one and the same virginity, etc. Joan is
unable to deny this.

Therefore the charge brought against Raymond by Joan herself is dismissed.
Joan is to be imprisoned for false accusation; however, she is pardoned
because underage.

As for the Crown's case, Raymond, asked how he wishes to clear himself
of rape and felony, states that he had elsewhere been acquitted of
that rape and felony, before Henry le Scrop and his fellow justices
of the King's Bench, by a local jury to whose verdict he had submitted
himself, win or lose. He presents a record of his acquittal, under
the seal of that Henry, together with the king's writ addressed to
Henry [ordering him] to send that
record to the justices here; he also presents the king's writ to
the justices here, [ordering them]
to admit the document [into evidence]
and furthermore to do justice etc. The document having been inspected,
it was verified that Raymond had been acquitted of rape and felony at
the king's suit. Therefore he is acquitted.

DISCUSSION

Apart from illustrating how a young girl might become a pawn in
the affairs of men, this case  which later became part of a
compilation of examples used to help law students learn about legal
manoeuvring  gives an indication of the drawbacks of medieval
legal records.

The legal system required careful adherence to formulae, both in the
procedure of a complaint and in the narrative of the accusation and defence.
Bracton
outlined the procedure to be followed by a virgin who had been raped; the
record of the case above reflects that procedure and the emphasis on loss
of virginity. Rape of a married woman or widow was considered less
serious, but rape of a virgin  at least from the time of the
second Statute of Westminster (1285)  was a felony and punishable
by mutilation or death.

The information provided for the legal record is shaped at least as much
by what the law required as by the real details of events. This included
drawing the crime to the immediate attention of neighbours who could
witness wounds and torn clothing, then to the attention of the authorities,
and  after Raymond has won his first acquittal, before the
King's Bench  subsequently to the coroners, who would ensure
the trial came before the eyre. Joan must have had to repeat the facts
of her charge on several occasions, very carefully to ensure the formulae
were respected; in this she would surely have received coaching from
family and neighbours, who also may well have taken a leading role in
the hue-and-cry following Joan's ordeal, since Joan would surely have
fled home first.

We can also see that the formal record of the case is only a summary
of the evidence presented during court proceedings. For the legal report
which happens to have survived for this eyre provides fuller information.
It describes, for instance, the location of the alleged rape in
greater detail, while the description of the assault itself is even
more detailed:

In the middle of the room ... [Raymond]
took the same Joan ... between his two arms and, without her consent and
against her will, lay her down on the floor, her belly facing up and her
back against the ground, and with his right hand pulled Joan's
clothing  she being dressed in a coat of blue
say and a dress of a light cloth 
up as far as her navel.... Using both hands he pushed apart Joan's legs
and thighs and, with his right hand took his penis of length etc. and
of size etc. and put it into Joan's cunt, breaking through her "watershed"
and laying her open, making her bleed, and depriving her of her
virginity.

And yet this level of detail is open to question, for we may doubt whether
a probably terrified young girl would have been able to focus on
the details of what was being done to her. Again, we may be seeing
instead an emphasis for legal purposes on the force and injury.

Due in part to the brevity of the legal records, it is difficult for
us to reach our own conclusions as to the true guilt or innocence of
accused parties. The case against Raymond of Limoges who, as his surname
suggests and as evidence from another source indicates, was a
merchant of Bordeaux and presumably only in London on a business trip,
appears to be strong. His attempt to delay matters  perhaps
a panic reaction, prompted by the prospect of being hung  by
claiming benefit of clergy cannot endear us to him. His defence strategy
rested more on the discrepancies in Joan's case  the inexplicable
inconsistency in the dates of the alleged rape, and the question of
whether he could be tried twice for the same offence (such being an
issue debated by the eyre lawyers)  than on grounds to believe
his innocence.

Joan's complaint, whether on 9th or 19th March, was taken seriously
enough to warrant Raymond's arrest on 23 March and his imprisonment
until 25 June, when he was acquitted. After acquittal, Raymond pursued
legal damages of £100 against Joan's father and the others, claiming
a conspiracy to frame him had been formed in February 1320. This case
dragged on from October 1320 to at least June 1321; its conclusion is
not known. Meanwhile, Eustace's daughter's complaint of rape had been
renewed before the coroner, despite the 40-day limitation for such a
complaint under London custom (also a subject debated by the lawyers),
in order to have the case referred to the eyre.

It is possible that Raymond used the delay won from his claim of clergy
to influence the jurors to support him  although such influence
(e.g. bribery) could not have been easy from within prison unless he
had others to help him  or to have Joan or her father intimidated
into dropping their prosecution. That Raymond was able to obtain a
royal writ obliging the eyre court to admit into evidence the copy of
his earlier acquittal suggests he had money and/or influence.

A further factor in Raymond's acquittal was the fact that a legal system
dominated by men may have been reluctant to condemn their fellows
to mutilation or hanging for a crime they did not consider warranted
such severity. Professor Hanawalt (Of Good and Ill Repute: Gender
in Social Control in Medieval England, Oxford: University Press, 1998),
who has analyzed the Seler vs. Lymoges case from this perspective,
points out that rape charges were far less common than homicides, few
of the rape charges that were brought obtained a conviction, and
convictions leading to capital punishment are virtually non-existent.
Unless the accused admitted guilt by fleeing, leading to outlawry,
the best a complainant might hope for would be to damage the reputation
of her attacker.

On the other hand, without clearer evidence, we cannot dismiss
the possibility that Eustace and his friends had fabricated the story
of the rape in order to have Raymond imprisoned, perhaps in relation
to business dealings; Professor Cam suggests it may have been to prevent
Raymond claiming a debt owed him. That Raymond avoided in his
defence addressing the substance of the accusation does not help us
in determining whether there was any substance.

Raymond's countersuit implies a connection with Eustace prior to
the date of the alleged rape, and conceivably Eustace may have been
looking to obtain the financial compensation due from a convicted
rapist, to counterbalance a debt he owed. Nor is it beyond the realm
of possibility that Eustace was pimping his own daughter 
something Raymond could not have used as a defence, given the age of
the girl. It was not unknown for women to be used as tools to bring
charges before the courts; in fact, the royal justices at Wigan in
1323 were assigned, as one of their articles of investigation, to enquire
about any cases of persons making use of underage children to accuse
others of felony and obtain their incarceration.

We will probably never know if poor Joan suffered a terrible rape,
only to see her attacker go free through legal technicalities and,
possibly, corruption or bias of a jury; or whether Eustace was
heartlessly using his own daughter to bring pressure on a creditor.
As Professor Cam (Eyre of London, cxxiv) concluded: "Either way
it was a dirty business."

NOTES

"Seler"
A saddlemaker.

"raising hue-and-cry"
After raising hue-and-cry, the
law report tells us, Joan sought out the ward beadles, who took her
to the sheriff; the complaint was next referred to the coroner (who
had the authority to refer complaints to a court) before being brought
before the king. This  the correct legal procedure from the point
of view of the king's court  would have seem a remarkably
clear-headed response from a young girl who had just undergone a
traumatic experience. However, Joan's hue-and-cry may perhaps have
taken place later than we might infer from the text; her
rationale
for hue-and-cry was likely to establish public witness to
the physical signs of the harm done her (i.e. bloodstains, torn clothing).

"says that he is a cleric"
Claiming "benefit of clergy", if the claim could be supported, was a way
for the defendant to transfer a case to a church court, which could
be expected to impose a less harsh sentence. Many members of society
were in lesser orders. In Raymond's case it was only a delaying tactic.

"Ordinaries"
An Ordinary was a cleric having a jurisdiction associated with an
ecclesiastical office that involved judicial, legislative or
governmental authority.

"the Crown's case"
Since rape was a felony, the defendant had to answer not only Joan's
appeal, but an indictment from the Crown.